Thursday, June 30, 2016

Dear readers, probably this
information will force somebody to look at the Russian-Ukrainian war with different
eyes. This guy was born in Lviv in 1974. In 1996 he received an invitation to perform
at Opera de la Bastille in Paris. In 1997 he graduated from the Lysenko Music Academy
in Lviv and then was invited to the Paris Opera where he became an opera singer.
Following the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war he returned to Ukraine and joined
the fighters against Russian occupants as a member of the 7th Battalion of the Volunteer
Ukrainian Corps of the Right Sector.

He took the military call sign Mif, a reference to his favorite aria of Mephistopheles from the opera Faust. After the war he planned to continue his career in Paris. On 29 June 2016, at approximately 6 a.m. he was killed by a sniper shot near the town of Luhansk. His name is Vasyl Slipak.

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

June 21, 2016 (Ukraine Today) European leaders
insist resctrictions to be kept unless Minsk agreements fully implemented. The
European Union is preparing to extend sanctions against Russiafor another
six months this week, but what happens after that is uncertain as cracks in the
bloc's unity have begun to show. The E.U. top diplomats are expected to agree
to prolong the sanctions, which expire at the end of July, at a meeting in
Luxembourg on June 21st, though E.U. leaders will not give them a formal
blessing until their summit in Brussels next week.

To this point, German
Chancellor Angela Merkel has firmly guided the bloc toward maintaining
sanctions, keeping Russia-friendly members of her own government on the
sidelines while convincing skeptical states like Slovakia, Hungary, and Italy
to set aside their objections and go along. But Merkel can no longer
hide growing evidence that the mood in Berlin is shifting in favor of Russia in
what may be the first sign of a serious break in the European consensus.

Saturday, June 11, 2016

showing the biggest scrap heap in
Europe located near the village of Grybovychi not far from Lviv. Day by day heavy
garbage trucks have been delivering there tons of trash from all Lviv region. There
was never any question of any sort of waste recycling. Now this scrap heap is
covered with clouds of poisonous smoke that you can see at

It is not still clear whether it
was an intentionally set fire or whether the garbage ignited by itself. Two fire
fighters were killed by a big landslide caused by the fire and heavy rain. The
height of the collapsed garbage hill was about 30 meters. To extinguish the
fire local authorities were forced to call for firefighting aircrafts.

But even after this fire is extinguished the
problem of waste disposal remains a burning problem in our country. Not long
ago a TV program dedicated to the so-called “Swedish recycling revolution” has
been broadcast in Ukraine. Many Ukrainians learned that more than 99 percent of all household waste in Sweden is recycled in
one way or another. This means that the country has gone through something of a
recycling revolution in the last decades, considering that only 38 per cent of
household waste was recycled in 1975. Many recycling plants using modern technologies
were built across the country.

Most Ukrainians never knew that Swedes separate
all recyclable waste in their homes and deposit it in special containers in
their block of flats or drop it off at a recycling station. But most impressive
was the fact that Sweden now is not only recycling domestic garbage but is also
importing tons of garbage from Norway.

Thursday, June 9, 2016

June 9, 2016 (BBC News Europe) Nato
and Russia are to meet to discuss the Ukraine crisis, which has severely
strained relations since Moscow's annexation of Crimea in 2014. The
Nato-Russia Council will convene in the next two weeks to discuss the peace
process in eastern Ukraine, as well as the situation in Afghanistan. But Nato
Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned that it was not a "return to
business as usual". Nato has moved to bolster its forces in its east
European member states. The forthcoming meeting, Mr Stoltenberg said, was
"the continuation of our political dialogue as agreed by Nato heads of
state and government". "At the same time, there will be no return to business
as usual until Russia again respects international law," he added.

The
Nato-Russia Council was established in 2002. Meetings at ambassadorial level have not taken place since June 2014,
although there has been other political dialogue. Nato announced last month
that an extra armoured brigade would be deployed in eastern Europe, meaning a
total of three will be there on a continuous basis.

General Philip
Breedlove, the senior US commander in Europe, talked of "reassuring... Nato
allies and partners in the wake of an aggressive Russia in eastern Europe and
elsewhere". Russia is widely accused of covertly backing the rebels who
now control much of eastern Ukraine after a bloody armed conflict with the
government in Kiev.

A US destroyer visited the Polish port of Gdynia on Friday

Late last
year, Russian President Vladimir Putin described Nato's expansion as a threat
to his country. A national security paper was updated to say that Nato's recent
build-up of military potential around Russia's borders constituted
"violations of norms of international law". Tension between Nato and
Russia, which both possess huge nuclear arsenals dating back to the Cold War,
has clouded international relations since the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine
following the peninsula's disputed referendum on self-determination.

Friday, June 3, 2016

June 2, 2016 (Uaposition) Russia is now
preparing an offensive in order to create a land corridor through mainland
Ukraine to the Russian-occupied Crimea, according to Deputy Secretary of
National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Mykhailo Koval who addressed
the participants of the meeting of the Interparliamentary Assembly of the
Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the Seimas of Lithuania and the Sejm and the Senate
of the Republic of Poland, an UNIAN correspondent reported. Koval noted
that ”Russia violates the provisions of the Minsk agreements, and does not
intend to comply with them.”

”The Russian troops are preparing
for the resumption of active offensive operations in order to advance to the
administrative border of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as penetrate
the land corridor to Crimea,” said Koval. He emphasized that international
sanctions against Russia ”are effective, but not enough to force Russia to abandon
the plans of aggression against Ukraine.”

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Many strategically important dams
and plants were dynamited by retreatingRed
Armytroops in 1941 afterGermany's invasion of the Soviet Union. The
Dnieper Hydroelectric Station has been
mined in advance in August 1941 by 157th NKVD regiment. 20 tons of ammonal
were used by miners under the command of Colonel Boris Epov.

Colonel Boris Epov

When two German
divisions: 9th and 14th approached the city of Zaporizhia
the order to set the station off has been given by the Red Army high command.
The explosion has been set off at 20:15 August 18th 1941. American
journalist H. R. Knickerbocker wrote that year: “This
way Russians have proved now by their destruction of the great dam at Zaporizhia
that they mean truly to scorch the earth before
Hitler even if it means the destruction of their most precious possessions”.
The tidal surge killed many unsuspecting civilians, as well as Red Army
officers and soldiers who were crossing over the river.

These pictures were taken soon after the dam was set off

When Zaporizhia was taken by Wehrmacht,
it took 46 days for German military builders to repair the station. New
electric equipment was delivered from Germany in summer 1942 and thus power
generation was restarted. In 1943 the station was dynamited again by retreating German troops. The dam suffered extensive
damage, and the powerhouse hall was nearly destroyed. Both were rebuilt between
1944 and 1949.